Multimodal literacy is about understanding the different ways of meaning-making. Thanks to the explosive growth in access to digital technologies, we are entering a digital manufacturing era. Today’s learners need to be able to use digital media to juxtapose and link text, diagrams, tables, datasets, video documentation, audio recordings, and other media. Multimodality is the use of several modes (media) to create a single artifact.

The learners of today and of the future, must be able to engage with knowledge in a multimodal way. The workers of today and tomorrow also must engage with multiple modes of representation or meaning.

For perhaps the first time ever, resulting from the digital-manufacturing era, a practically endless supply of multimodal resources and creation tools are available. Never before have learners had access to this potential. It's an extraordinary capacity.

A multimodal concept I have found effective in practice is visual learning through screen recordings. I teach a website development course and in critical knowledge areas I have the students screen record themselves building a website while explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it. The end result is a collection of videos of multiple students explaining in their own words and images the important learning objectives. This is very effective as it reduces the instructor’s burden of creating learning content, and it is also effective because it leverages the power of peer instruction and learning. The free screen recording software I recommend to students is “Open Broadcaster Software” and can be found at: https://obsproject.com. Then, after the students’ screen recording are complete, I instruct them to upload it freely to YouTube.com where others can also watch and learn from it for free.